IruPuli Kozhambu

This post is dedicated to Devayani maami who recently passed on. Sridhar, her son was kind enough to share this recipe from maami's cookbook. We fondly remember maami, for her dishes that we used to savor whenever we visited their home.  

 Maami, we seek your blessings from your heavenly abode.

The following is the recipe. I have made minimal changes to the recipe from her cookbook as I want to retain maami's way of narrating the recipe.

This dish is called Iru(two)  Puli(sour) - two ingredients to instill a taste of sourness of the dish. The ingredients that are usually used to incorporate the sourness are tamarind and sour curd. The dish can also be prepared with one sour ingredient. With this definition of the dish out of our way, we may jump straight away into the preparation of this dish!

Cook vegetables – sweet pumpkin, white pumpkin, 1 potato, 1capsicum, 1, brinjal, ladies finger, Bangalore badanekai (chayote), sorrekai (bottle gourd), (etc. with turmeric powder and salt separately in the pressure cooker.

1. Porichikuute (season)- mustard and red chilies and keep ready (with coconut oil or ghee)
2. Porichikuute- half spoon menthya (fenugreek), little rice, and red chilies, asafoetida 
3. Grind Porichikuute- half spoon menthya, little rice, and red chilies, asafoetida for a couple of second for mixing 
4. Add grated coconut to the ground menthya, little rice, and red chilies grind to a fine paste, add salt while grinding in the mixie to taste- keep separate
5. Remove the cooked vegetables and boil with little water for the minimum time
6. Add the tamarind paste and boil for some time. Let tamarind paste oak into the vegetables
7. Add the ground coconut paste to the vegetable and boil for some time
8. Add a dash of jaggery
9. Taste for correct salt and khara (spiciness)- add salt as per requirement
10. Add the Porichikuute- mustard and red chilies and mix and boil
11. In a vessel add a spoon of ghee and the curry leaves
12. Pour the Irupuli into the vessel with the ghee and curry leaf and serve hot

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